Ponting Confident Australia Will Bounce Back

Saturday 19 January 2008

Australian captain Ricky Ponting told a news conference that he is confident that Australia will bounce back from the 72-run defeat at the hands of India in the third Test in Perth.
"Australian teams historically have been able to bounce back," he said. "If we lose a game or have things not go our way we can turn things around pretty quickly.
"That's what our whole focus will be now. We played some great cricket in Melbourne, we played some great cricket in Sydney. We've let ourselves down a little bit in this game but it's about how we bounce back from that now."
Ponting said India deserved to win the match and conceded that Australia were not at their best throughout the match.
"It was a tough four days, India deserved to win the game the way they did. They outplayed us for the majority of the game," he added.
"A lot of our skills have let us down more than anything this week. I thought our preparation was great and it was just little critical moments in this match we faltered and it's been a long time since we've done that."
The defeat denied them the chance to set a new world record of 17 consecutive Test victories, which Ponting was understandably disappointed about.
"Sixteen matches in a row is a great achievement, it would have been great to win one more...but we haven't been good enough in this game," he admitted.
"The run was always going to come to an end at some stage, we just haven't played a brand of cricket that has been good enough to win this match."